i WOULD LIKE TO BUILD A NEW HOUSE-AND i’M FASCINARED WITH THE MUD-BRICK CONSTRUCTION (ADOBE) USED IN THE aMERICAN sOUTHWEST, iS THIS POSSIBLE? i KNOW ADOBE IS VULNERABLE TO RAIN (THE MUD BASICALLY WASHES AWAY); HOW CAN YOU WATERPROOF AN ADOBE HOUSE? hOW LONG DO THEY TAKE TO BUILD?
water expands when it freezes.
water will find its way into adobe.
now you know why nobody has adobe houses in areas subject to hard freezes.
and I wouldn’t advise stucco, either
If you’re looking for a New England version of old world construction maybe you should look into something like timber frame plus wattle and daub. Stone or log might be worth looking at, too. Like HH said your adobe house wouldn’t last long. Think local materials.
Sounds like a General Question to me. Off you go.
You also don’t want to cover the adobe with a air/moisture-tight surface or covering. Rather than keeping out the moisture, it traps the moisture that seeps up from the ground or that which is there naturally inside.
I worked in a radio station in New Mexico that had originally been adobe. At some point in the past not long before I was hired, one of the parade of owners of the station decided that having an adobe radio station sent the wrong message to the public, so he had it covered with (I think) stucco. About a year after I began there, I was looking over at the log posted on the wall to see who had the next shift and suddenly the wall just wasn’t there, it had collapsed. I always felt that the control room needed a window, but I had hoped it would be created in a little more traditional fashion.
Some of the old men who still built adobe houses said they had told the owner that it would happen if he covered the adobe with anything, but he hadn’t listened or at least hadn’t taken them seriously.
I know a man who built a baled-hay house and he claims it has all the advantages of adobe and none of the disadvantages.
As for length of time to build, everytime I have seen it done it is a community effort (somewhat akin to a barn raising), and it takes maybe a day or two - maybe as long as a week, but they have been relatively small places, too.
Buy a copy of the Mother Earth News magazine (this month’s issue). It has a good overview of adobe, rammed earth and other similar building techniques and how and where they can be used.
There’s an article about hay-bale houses here: http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,1282,51158,00.html.
I’ve been in a couple, and they look a lot like adobe. They weren’t what I was expecting, they seemed quite nice. I was expecting super-thick walls and a smell like a barn. Still, I don’t know how’d they’d handle a midwest or northwest rainy hot summer/cold snowy winter (these were in New Mexico).
I don’t know much about adobe, but I’d be worried about using it anywhere it snows. Snow/ice is hard enough on building materials that doesn’t get squishy when exposed to water (reparing winter damaged walls and roofs in Wisconsin pretty much put me through college). You’d probably be better off faking it with plaster or blown concrete over whatever you actually made the walls out of.